Introduction
Welcome, dear readers, to another installment of ”Running Wild”, the article series where I cover just about all things related to the wild format. Journey to Un’Goro has been out for about a month now and players have been having different success with a lot of different decks. However, not all decks cost equally and some new players can’t afford crafting top tier standard meta decks. Because keeping up with standard is so expensive then it isn’t hard to imagine that those same players aren’t even considering crafting wild decks because those would be even more expensive, right? Well, yes and no, but I’m here today to present you with a few very low cost budget wild decks for you to climb the ladder with and, hopefully, have some very good results.
Sit back, relax, and let’s dive right into this! 🙂
Defining Our Budget
Now, a budget deck means a different thing to different players. Some players consider a budget deck to be one which is filled with commons and maybe 2-4 rare cards while other think of them as decks that have cards from all varieties but don’t cost too much to craft. Something that we also need to keep in mind are the adventures that have rotated out this year. Are these decks being built for players who have those adventures or for those who haven’t and I need to take into account the dust that one would need to spend in order to craft cards from those adventures? Well, here is how I’m going to deal with that.
Last year was the first year of standard and, with that being the newest format and all, most players have played the standard format. Due to this I think that it is safe to assume that most players out there have all the cards from Blackrock Mountain and League of Explorers. It is not unreasonable to assume that, especially for the latter, because a large portion of the cards from those adventures were played during the entire season. Because different players have different collections I won’t assume that everyone has most of the cards from the previous expansions so all other cards on this list need to be crafted. I will also assume that the players who are looking for these budget decks don’t have the cards from Curse of Naxxramas and Goblins vs Gnomes.
I think that these are reasonable assumptions and that, with all of this taken into consideration, I think that we can agree that a 1200 dust max is a very reasonable price for a budget deck (although not all of them will reach that price).
What’s For Breakfast, Dad?
The easiest route to take when constructing budget decks is to fill them with various common and basic cards and try to make them work. The result is, more often that not, various aggro decks and zoo decks. While literally every class can have their own budget aggro deck, I want to focus more on other types of decks, mainly zoo decks as I find their playstyle to be a lot more interesting than just hitting your opponent in the face and hoping that they die before you do. However, there are only two classes that do zoo really well and those are druid and warlock (both will be featured here). The third class, in my opinion, would be paladin because of the various buffs that he has and the hero power that creates 1/1 tokens.
Egg druid is the first deck that I’m going to talk about today. To be perfectly honest with you, I wasn’t a huge fan of this archetype until somewhere around the very end of the first year of standard when I’ve figured out that I’m missing only about 50 wins for a golden druid hero but I didn’t feel like playing neither jade druid nor ramp druid. I went online, did some research and I’ve decided to give egg druid a go and I must say that I really love this deck 😀
This budget version is a bit different from the non budget version of the deck but mostly because it lacks some higher cost cards like echoing-ooze and patches-the-pirate. So, how do you play this deck? If you’ve ever played a zoo warlock, and I can’t imagine that you haven’t, or if you’ve at least played against one than you have some general idea on how zoo decks are played. You fight for the board control with your army of cheap minions while making the most valuable trades, which usually result in your favor, and attacking the face as often as possible (but not at the cost of favorable trades). Egg druid plays a lot like that. You have your very cheap minions who, more often than not, have the ability to give you even more minions and you’re looking to combine favorable trades with hitting face (probably a bit more often that with zoo warlock).
Egg druid is a bit more aggressive deck than your regular zoo warlock. While zoo warlock can replenish its hand very easily and it is hard for it to run out of resources, egg druid needs to take more care of its minions because it is a deck that solely relies upon having minions on the board to buff them with cards like power-of-the-wild and savage-roar. Speaking of which, another very effective buffing card is mark-of-the-lotus and feel free to put it into your own budget druid deck. The reason why I didn’t put it in this one is because the spot for the last 2 cards was shared between mark-of-the-lotus and ravasaur-runt and I’ve chosen to go for the extra minions.
The non budget version of this deck runs both sir-finley-mrrgglton and jeeves in order to draw cards but since we’re working on a bit of a budget here, and because there are players who have disenchanted their League of Explorers cards or they’ve got into Hearthstone this month and they don’t have those cards, I’ve decided to go with jeeves but if you find yourself in need of more damage than I strongly suggest that you remove jeeves, just one copy, and put in a sir-finley-mrrgglton. Hunter, warlock, paladin and even shaman hero powers work wonders with this deck. Last but not the least, try to get as much value from soul-of-the-forest as possible. The card is really amazing, especially when it starts turning your 1/1 minions into 2/2 minions 😀
Don’t Feed The Animals
Since I’ve covered one zoo type deck than it is only fitting that I immediately cover the other one as well. Throughout the Hearthstone history, zoo warlock has been the most budget friendly deck in the entire game and, when it first emerged back when the game was still growing, most of the new players have played this deck because it was mostly only common cards. This is the norm with zoo warlock decks and there are only a handful of exceptions that aren’t common cards. The only legendary minions that sees any real play in a zoo deck is leeroy-jenkins and although you can play the deck without it I would still recommend that you craft it if you can. There is one thing that you can be completely sure off and that is that as long as there are good common minions there is always going to be some version of the warlock zoo deck. Let’s take a look at this one, shall we?
Zoo warlock and control warrior are my two favorite decks in the entire game, followed by ramp druid, and I’m proud to say that I’ve mastered both of them, especially the zoo warlock deck. I love writing about this deck 🙂
For those of you who are new to the game, a zoo warlock deck is a deck that plays cheap minions and uses them to fight for the board control by making favorable trades while, at the same time, hitting your opponent in the face as often as possible to set up a lethal next turn. You would be surprised how easy it is to get lethal, out of nowhere, with a zoo warlock deck. The reason why this deck functions so well is because of the warlock’s hero power which, at the cost of 2 mana and 2 life, draws you a card. Almost any player who is well versed in this game will tell you that, out of all hero powers, warlock’s is without a doubt the most powerful one and that hero power completely shines in a zoo warlock deck, especially later in the game when you can both draw a card and play it instantly because everything in your deck is so cheap.
One thing to keep in mind while playing a zoo warlock deck is that position is everything with this deck. Don’t play too fast if you’re prone to making positioning mistakes. You have a full minute and a half per turn. Take your time, analyze the situation, see where will your dire-wolf-alpha make the most good not only for this turn but possibly on the following turn as well. Which minions are best to buff with your defender-of-argus? Remember not to put your dire-wolf-alpha on the right side of your imp-gang-boss and then attack with it. These are all small things but mastering them is what separates bad zoo players from the really good ones.
There are a lot of high value minions in this deck which can become more powerful if played correctly. darkshire-councilman is one of those minions. A 1/5 body for 3 mana is nothing to write home about but when you play it and then trade your haunted-creeper with an enemy minion which is at least 2/1 then your 1/5 minion suddenly becomes a 3/5 minion for 3 mana which is a lot better. Because it has 5 health and because, due to trading, your opponent won’t have many, if any, minions on the board it is, most of the time, extremely hard for them to remove your 5 health darkshire-councilman with a single removal card.
Another card that has insane value, a completely new card, is ravenous-pterrordax. It is the best card for the wild zoo warlock! ravenous-pterrordax is a minion that eats another friendly minion to, in return, adapt twice. On top of that is has very decent stats for the cost, a 4/4 minion for 4, which can easily improve any of those two stats by +3. What crazy shenanigans can you do with this card? Eat a nerubian-egg to get the 4/4 minion, eat a leftover imp from imp-gang-boss, eat any deathrattle minion on your side of the field after it attacks…you can even throw a power-overwhelming on a minion, attack with it and then eat it with ravenous-pterrordax so that the minion doesn’t go to complete waste. Best warlock card in the expansion, 10/10, a must have for a zoo deck!
In summary, zoo warlock is not only the best budget deck that you can go for but also the only one, out of this three, that can actually get you to legend. If you’re looking for ranking up in the wild format that this is by far the best deck that I can recommend. Check my other articles for a non budget version of the deck 😉
Taunt Is Cheat, Heal Is Hax
Me is smart, me go face!
Last but not the least is aggro hunter. Oh, man, now let me tell you something. Aggro hunter has been the bane of the ladder for YEARS! It is the only deck in the entire game that was nerfed several times over and over in an effort to make it less powerful and nothing had actually worked. Whenever the developers would nerf a vital part of this deck, something new would come out in the next set and we would have an infestation of aggro hunter all over again. Hunter’s card draw combo was nerfed and it did nothing. Hunter’s weapon was nerfed and it did nothing. undertaker was nerfed and it did nothing (in the big picture). This is the most resistant deck in the entire game and, best of all, it is extremely cheap, which brings me back to the point that aggro hunter and zoo warlock were two of the most played decks in the early days of Hearthstone.
There is really not that much to say about this deck. It is pretty self explanatory. Your goal is to kill your opponent lightning fast. In order to do so you’re going to play strong 1-2 drop minions and hit your hero power as often as possible. Your hero power is essential for the success of this deck, much like warlock’s is essential for the success of the zoo deck. What your hero power does is that it puts your opponent on the clock. If they don’t kill you quickly you’re going to eventually win through hero power alone (exceptions are warrior and priest). Next thing that you want to do is to hit your opponents hard and fast which is why we have both charge minions in this deck and minions that buff other minions. In this deck you don’t look to trade. You look only to hit face and trade only when your opponent has taunt minions on the board. Don’t worry, if you believe in the face you won’t be making misplays.
Regrding Journey to Un’Goro cards, glacial-shard is a very good minion for this deck because it can prevent your opponent from trading with their minion, getting lethal with it or even hitting you or your minions in the face with a weapon. It is a very solid inclusion for a budget face hunter deck and one that I strongly recommend. emerald-reaver is a minion that I want to say a few words about. I’ve included it in this deck because it is the closes to leper-gnome that we’ve been given in quite some time. It is a 2/1 for 1 which deals 2 damage to your opponent. It doesn’t even matter that it deals 2 damage to you because the whole point of the deck it to kill your opponent as fast as possible. It is a very good inclusion that I highly recommend playing.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of today’s article. I hope that these three decks have helped at least some of you who don’t have any dust to craft a top tier wild deck. If you have suggestions for different budged decks that are belowe 1200 dust I would love to hear them 🙂 Also, I’ll be publishing another article tomorrow, with more wild decks (unconventional ones), so be sure to swing by. So, what do you think about these decks? Leave your opinions and feedback in the comment section below and I will answer as soon as I can. I do read all of your comments but lately I’ve been really busy so I’m a bit slow with my replies.
As always  if you’ve liked this article do consider following me on twitter https://twitter.com/Eternal_HS. There you can ask me all sorts of Hearthstone questions (unrelated to this article) and I’ll gladly answer them as best as I can.
